Future Ancestors
Hwa Records (Roger Kim, Saewon Oh, C.Ryu, Kayla Tange)
June 8, 2025
Blue Ribbon Garden, Walt Disney Concert Hall
In the last few weeks we have witnessed the world continue to enact violence towards multiple communities, nations, and citizens of the land. The devastation is everywhere.
Future Ancestors is an offering calling in our ancient ancestors and their infinite wisdom but also an opening for our future ancestors. Saewon Oh activated our ceremony with a meditation reminding us that soon, we will all be ancestors too.
Transmuting grief into joy, our performance asks, what are the decisions we have to make now so that the world we leave is brighter and more joyous? How do we cultivate a world that cares? What types of futures will we create and protect as ancestors-in-training?
Future Ancestors debuted at the Blue Ribbon Garden at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on June 8th, 2025 at the GYOPO Diasporic Refractions
Posters designed by Julie Cho and Naree Kae
GYOPO Diasporic Refractions: Installations, Symposium, and Performances
https://gyopo.us/2025/05/21/gyopo-diasporic-refractions-performances/
June 8, 2025
1–1:40 PM
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Blue Ribbon Garden
151 S. Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Diasporic identity is one that is inherently multiple; at its core is a recognition of difference. GYOPO resists essentialized notions of Korean identity and culture by refracting them through the lens of diaspora and intersectionality. On the occasion of Seoul Festival, GYOPO and LA Phil Insight present a week of video installations at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a symposium, and an afternoon of performance.
Grounding GYOPO Diasporic Refractions are two works by Seoul-based artists: A Performing by Flash, Afterimage, Velocity, and Noise (2019), an audio-visual installation by siren eun young jung in BP Hall and 커터3 CutterIII (2023), a video installation by Heecheon Kim in the Grand Avenue Lobby. The weekend of programming begins with a symposium co-curated by musician and artist Sasami Ashworth on resistance and creative practice, featuring artist yuniya edi kwon, designer Mindy Seu, singer-songwriter NoSo, and performances by yuniya edi kwon and NoSo.
The GYOPO Diasporic Refractions: Pre-Concert Performances offers an immersive experience where honoring historical resilience manifests new possibilities for collective agency and dissent. Diasporic Korean artists and performers Ariel Osterweis, Sharon Chohi Kim, Hwa Records, and Young Sun Han ignite resistance from the spaces between memory and manifestation, navigating the nuanced terrains of cultural memory, generational healing, and community building. Through movement, sound, and bodily presence, diasporic identity is performed as a site of struggle and liberation—a living archive that refracts through embodied practice. This afternoon of performance invites audiences to witness how the active transformation of cultural memory through artistic interventions results in a return to deeply ancient ritual, one that demands collective imagining and building of liberatory futures. This afternoon of performance is part of GYOPO Diasporic Refractions, which explores Korean diasporic experience through various interdisciplinary arts.